Page 42 of One Bad Knight

But I didn’t let that stop me. “I don’t care if you’re angry that I’m sorry that happened to you. I don’t want you to be in pain. You didn’t deserve it. You didn’t deserve to be used, to be forced to do those horrible things.”

Despite the look of intense concentration in his dark eyes, his grip loosened, and my hand found its way over to his heart.

“I can’t—” he started and then stopped, as if deciding if he could voice the words he wanted to say. “I can’t decide if you are the most foolish girl in the world, or an angel on Earth.”

I would have been insulted, but the wonder in his voice let me know he believed it to be the latter. He couldn’t be more wrong, but his words made me tingle. Or maybe that was his thumb caressing my hand.

“Do your brothers know?” I asked, aware I was walking onto very thin ice by asking that question.

“No,” he said simply.

“Maybe you should tell them. I can tell they care about you.”

The intimacy of the moment shattered. He released my hand and turned his back on me.

“And what about you? Are you going to tell your uncle you are free to do what you want? That you don’t want to go to law school, and you are an artist? That you are in control of your life?”

“They don’t control me. And I’m happy to support them in whatever way possible.” A tiny sharp jab went through my stomach, but I pushed the feeling aside. “Family is the most important thing, and they care about you. And your brothers could be your family if you let them.”

A dry laugh of disbelief escaped him. “Kat, if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that no one cares about me.”

Refusing to be pushed out, I pressed my bare breasts against his back, molding my naked body against his body to wrap my arms around him. “I care about you.” Before he could protest, I went on. “And I saw the look in their eyes when they saw you. The sadness at seeing you on your own, the yearning for you to join them. Like they are missing a piece of their family.”

“Even if what you say is true, they don’t know what I’ve done. If they…” He paused as if weighing his words. “If they knew what I’d done, they would despise me. They would see me as the monster that needs to be banished back to the Stygian.”

“You aren’t a monst—”

Before I could finish, he whirled around and silenced me with his lips. His hands framed my face as he kissed me with almost painful tenderness. As if he were holding back an ocean’s worth of emotion and was afraid of breaking me.

“Kat,” he whispered against my lips. “I am too broken and bad for you. And you should never forget that.”

He said it as if it were the most important fact in this world. But in his eyes, I could tell it broke his heart to say it. But it would break his heart still more, if I didn’t believe him.

Winding my arms around him, I pressed my head against his chest. “I don’t care if you are good or bad, Gatsby. I care that you stay with me.”

His arms tightened around me, and we stood there for several minutes. Holding each other.

“Do you know what you are for, Gatsby?” I whispered.

“What?” he whispered back.

“To be loved.”

16

Kat

The next day, it was less of a shock when I brought Gatsby down to breakfast. Though the air was no less tense. The way my family eyed the tattoos on his neck, as if they could will him out of his existence, or the very least, from the dining table.

“So Gatsby, where are you from?” my uncle asked.

“Yes, where are you from?” Dave parroted.

I had to keep from rolling my eyes. Sometimes I wondered if Dave's one wish was to be a carbon copy of my uncle.

Even Gabe set aside his tablet to hear the answer.

Gatsby didn’t answer. He was shoveling food into his mouth with that single-minded efficiency again.